WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: PDF on websites + PDF is *not* accessible

for

From: Shawn Henry (uiAccess projects)
Date: Jul 1, 2013 10:31PM

Olaf & all,

I fully agree with you that it would be best if the community comes together to make all technologies more accessible and usable to people with disabilities. *That is my goal*. For about 10 years I have actively (though quietly) encouraged PDF to support the text customization that users need. (And I encourage web browsers to improve usability for text customization.)

My concern is the lack of understanding that PDF is not currently accessible to some users. Many people think "accessible PDF" is available today, but it is not. My goal is to help people understand the current limitations so that they can encourage those limitations to be addressed. That is the motivation for the many hours that I put into the research and development behind <http://www.tader.info>;

I stand by my original statements. To clarify: Even well tagged PDF developed with accessibility in mind is not sufficiently accessible to some people with low vision, dyslexia, and related conditions and situations that impact reading - because Adobe PDF Reader and other PDF viewers lack sufficient text customization functionality. (The aspects of text that users need to be able to customize are introduced at <http://www.tader.info/display.html>;)

To your points:

* VIP PDF Reader. It came out only last week, afaik. It provides more text customization for PDF than any other tool that I've evaluated! However, it still falls short of users' needs. For example, as far as I can tell, it does not work for some PDF documents, including any PDF with form fields; and it does not allow users to print documents. (See <http://www.tader.info/support.html#PDFisNOTaccessible>;) I will provide feedback to the tool developers, praising the positive points and encouraging improvements.

* pdfGoHTML. While it is helpful to some, it is not feasible to most and also has limitations. For example, it requires purchase of Acrobat, requires administrator access to install, and the HTML it produces misses some markup necessary for accessibility (likely due to a limitation of PDF itself, not pdfGoHTML).

* ISO. Unfortunately, becoming an ISO standard does not guarantee accessibility.

User needs. Accessibility of PDF has largely focused on screen reader access for users who are blind. I agree that was a priority in the past, given that there was no access at all. After that basic accessibility was covered, it is important to address accessibility for other users. I am focusing on people with low vision, dyslexia, and related conditions and situations that impact reading – including the increasing number of people with age-related impairments.

* HTML for documents. That is a tangent that I am not prepared to dive into. I'll briefly mention that currently word processing software offers the most usable text customization functionality. Web browsers provide limited text customization functionality through menu options; customizing all aspects of text display requires user style sheets, which is a skill beyond most users. EPUB and other efforts for advancing HTML for documents are underway... but I said I wasn't going to get into that tangent! :-)

I stand by the statement that "While PDF is a useful medium for some situations; when it is used, there must be a more accessible alternative provided in order for the information to be available to people with disabilities."
I am not saying that PDF should not be used. (I use it for documents intended to be printed -- and I also provide it in an alternative accessible format.) I am saying that PDF is not currently sufficiently accessible, therefore, if you want the information to be readable by everyone, it needs to be provided in a more accessible format as well.

---

Individuals and organizations have invested a lot of effort to make PDF more accessible to screen reader users. Thank you!!! I appreciate your efforts and acknowledge your success. Now I ask that all are open to further advancements to make PDF accessible to an even larger user group. For starters, see Understanding Users' Needs to Customize Text Display at <http://www.tader.info/understanding.html>;

Sincerely,
~Shawn



On 6/30/2013 7:05 PM, Olaf Drümmer wrote:
> Hi Shawna,
>
> On 1 Jul 2013, at 01:27, Shawn Henry (uiAccess projects) wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Background from previous comments is below [1].
>>
>> The problem is that PDF is currently *not sufficiently accessible* to many people with low vision, dyslexia, and related conditions and situations that impact reading - because Adobe Reader and other PDF viewers lack sufficient text customization functionality.
>
> except you have for example
> - Adobe Reader with at least JAWS and NVDA to provide a very decent user experience for people with vision disabilities
> - free VIP PDF Reader for people with low vision
> - free pdfGoHTML for people wishing to to redirect PDF content to their default browser and use it as they see fit, including low vision users and dyslexic users
>
>> Even well tagged PDF that is more accessible to screen reader users is still *not accessible* to many people with other print disabilities. Accessibility is more than screen reader access.
>
> absolutely - and that's why the above mentioned tools exist. And more are to come...
>
>> Unfortunately, "tagged PDF" started getting called "accessible PDF" -- that is inaccurate and a harmful misnomer. It perpetuates the lack of awareness, even among accessibility specialists, that PDF is actually not accessible to many people with print disabilities.
>
> Complaining about language other people use, I think you should be more careful with your own language here - the sentence "that PDF is actually not accessible to many people with print disabilities" in this form just doesn't hold water. What you probably wanted to say is that PDFs that are neither tagged nor prepared with accessibility in mind are not accessible to many people with print disabilities (though personally I wouldn't limit this to *print** disabilities, but that's just my view here...)
>
>>> My job is to communicate one person's ideas to another person.
>>> I want to provide what is both legally required and what is desirable to the users.
>>
>> While PDF is a useful medium for some situations;
>
> ... except hat the zillions of documents out there will never ever be converted to HTML. More and more of them are being provided in an accessible fashion though.
>
>
>> when it is used, there must be a more accessible alternative provided in order for the information to be available to people with disabilities.
>
> To be honest - I consider this statement in this form 100% unacceptable. Wake up! The world has changed.
>
>
>
> People in this community will have to choose - either ask for something that will never happen (and continue to try to block PDF altogether), or join those who are (more and more successfully) nudging PDF towards a pretty decent degree of accessibility. It should be acknowledged that there even was an ISO standard for accessible PDF (ISO 14289-1) before there was an ISO standard for accessible web content (ISO 40500). ;-)
>
>
> PDF is a format for documents. HTML is not a format for documents. The world is not a disk, and there is content outside of web sites. Maybe rich text format or Word files or OpenOffice files could serve as a carrier for accessible documents, but HTML as of today is not in a position to serve as a document format. And as a consequence nobody is preparing and exchanging their documents in HTML format, but a substantial portion of users is creating, exchanging, sharing, publishing their documents in PDF form. It is not clear to me how this can be denied?
>
>
> And one more thing: PDF itself is an ISO standard (for five years now, actually). Adobe is just one out of many companies dealing in PDF (albeit a very important company). Talk (also) to other PDF developers, not just Adobe, whenever you wish to further the accessibility of PDFs.
>
>
> Olaf
>
>
> PS: BTW - personally, I find it easier to make my PDFs accessible than to make the websites accessible that I am responsible for... ;-)
>
>
>> ---
>>
>> I've been fairly quiet about this for many years (except to Adobe product managers :) because the accessibility of PDF has improved from years ago, but I'm deeply concerned about the *misconception that PDF is accessible*.
>>
>> For more info, please see:
>> * Text Customization for Readability <http://www.tader.info/>;
>> * PDF viewers section of Support for Text Customization <http://www.tader.info/support.html#PDFisNOTaccessible>;
>>
>> (That is a work in progress and I welcome feedback directly.)
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> ~Shawn Henry
>> <http://www.uiaccess.com/profile.html>;
>>
>> Note: Please be careful in referencing the information on the tader.info website and e-mails from uiAccess.com as from the individual Shawn, not her employer.
>>
>>
>> [1] Background from previous comments:
>> ...
>>> Here's the Access Board's current standards, effective December 21, 2000.
>>> http://access-board.gov/sec508/standards.htm
>>>
>>> Subpart A General, Section 1194.1 Purpose.
>>> "Section 508 requires that when Federal agencies develop, procure, maintain,
>>> or use electronic and information technology, Federal employees with
>>> disabilities have access to and use of information and data that is
>>> comparable to the access and use by Federal employees who are not
>>> individuals with disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on
>>> the agency." [next sentence includes the general public]
>>>
>>> I think the key words are "have access and use of information and data that
>>> is comparable."
>>> If the PDF is truly accessible, then it meets this requirement. Nothing more
>>> needs to be done.
>>> If the other hand, the PDF wasn't accessible (and therefore not providing
>>> comparable access and use of the information), then alternate accessible
>>> versions would be needed.
>> ...
>>
>>> A better, more effective strategy for WebAIM is to get Adobe, Microsoft, and
>>> the AT manufacturers to create better tools for PDFs (and other documents)
>>> accessibility software/technologies. A well-made PDF can be accessible and
>>> can equally match accessible HTML, but today's tools sometimes make it
>>> difficult and costly to achieve that.
>>>
>>> As a communicator, I want better tools so that I can successfully
>>> communicate with everyone, regardless of whether they have a disability or
>>> not.
>>
>> ###
>>
>> >> >> >
> > > >